Lanthanide-induced phosphorus-31 NMR downfield chemical shifts of lysophosphatidylcholines are sensitive to lysophospholipid critical micelle concentration.

Lysophosphatidylcholine (lysoPC) monomers or micelles in water give rise to a narrow, isotropic phosphorus-31 NMR signal (40.6 ppm; v1/2 1.7 Hz; 32.2 MHz). Upon addition of praseodymium ions, the phosphorus signals are shifted downfield. However, the downfield shifts for the longer-chain lysophosphatidylcholines, which exist in the aggregated state, are far greater than those for the shorter-chain homologues, which exist as monomers. At a Pr3+/lysoPC molar ratio of 0.5, the signals of C12lysoPC through C18lysoPC were shifted by 12.1 ppm, whereas the signals of C6lysoPC and C8lysoPC were shifted by only 2.26 ppm. This very pronounced difference in lanthanide-induced downfield shifts between micelles and monomers can be utilized to determine with accuracy lysoPC critical micelle concentrations (CMC) from downfield shift-vs.-concentration plots. The CMC values we determined were 57 mM for C8lysoPC, 5.7 mM for C10lysoPC, and 0.6 mM for C12lysoPC. The shift reagent phosphorus-31 nuclear magnetic resonance technique particularly lends itself to the measurement of CMC values in the millimolar and high micromolar range. The method can equally be used for measuring critical micelle concentrations of short-chain phosphatidylcholines.